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tv   The Cycle  MSNBC  September 25, 2012 12:00pm-1:00pm PDT

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football and mean it literally. it's now being tackled on the presidential field. >> i'm steve kerr naky. today we'll talk to a self-described peer progressive and says we can change washington and it's pretty simple. >> all that. i get the whole world peace thing until it makes me late for work. it's tuesday, september 25th, and you're in the cycle. president obama takes the stage today. his 30 minute remarks focused the deft of ambassador chris stevens. >> in every culture, those who love freedom for themselves must ask themselves how much they're willing to tolerate freedom for others. it's a crude and disgusting
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video, sparked outrage throughout the muslim world. it's an insult not only to muslims but americans as well. on this we must agree. there's no speech that justifies mindless violence. there are no words that excuse the killing of innocence. there's no video that justifies an attack on an embassy. there's no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in lebanon or destroy a school in tunis or kauft death and destruction in pakistan. >> the president also delivered some of his toughest talk yet against iran's nuclear ambitions. iran's president mahmoud ahmadinejad addressed the u.n. >> it's not a challenge that would be contained. it would threaten the elimination of israel, security of gulf nations and the stability of the global economy. the coalition of governments is holding iran accountable.
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that's why the united states will do what they must to prevent iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. >> the president is taking an unconventional role in u.n. week, opting not to hold by lateral meetings. instead he's packing secretary of state hillary clinton's calendar full of those meetings. meanwhile they're zeroing in where they called the recent events in the middle east bumps in the road i was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road. >> iran is on the cusp of having a nuclear capability. we have tu malt in syria and also pakistan. i don't consider these bumps in the road. >> both men spoke at the clinton global initiative speaking out against forced labor and sex
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trafficking and romney laying out his plan for a pros pair path. let's start at table. so, steve, you have a theory for why foreign policy the talk of the town this week. >> well, because it's u.n. week. i mean that's the obvious. >> you're going out on a limb here. >> i'm glad we built this up. i wouldn't be surprised if it's still something they're talking about after u.n. week and it strikes me that there's a lot of evidence, and even evidence from republican polls that the central premise of the romney campaign that there are going to be swing voters, that economic frustration will ultimately lead them to say i won't ask questions. i want to turn to mitt romney, that too's just not working. the newest evidence today, republican pollster david winston said 18% of his asked
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and 18% if they're better off than four years ago. 77% whether they believe things will get better in the future. 48% say problems are caused by the past, 45% say the current economic policies are causing more problems. the romney campaign is basically losing. it's basically a wash. the kpanl starts grasping for other things and that's why we're hearing -- >> romney is ahead over veterans 20 percentage points. maybe they're seeing some kind of opening there to talk about war. >> republicans have long had an advantage with veterans. i would add something that steve said. a tough couple of weeks. they saw something. they could seize on and get a little bit of -- go on the offense a little bit, get their mojo back which i'm sure they
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seized on. i don't think the bumps in the road is one that's going to get much traction for a couple of reasons. first of all when they hear that, it doesn't resonate with them as something that's really that off kilter. he wasn't talking about ambassador stevens' death. he was talking in general about the situation in the middle east. the other thing is a gaffe or attack is effective when it's something they already feel. so mitt romney's comments about the 47%. they go straight to the electorate that this guy is an arrogant condescending pollute cra carat. while i think it's an attack that plays well to the base, i don't think it's going to have much res nens in the middle. >> we'll see. way amount to bring our guest amy parns in. she's a white house correspondent on the hill. amy, what did you hear today.
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>> well, we heard two different things today. he wants to take the long view and he wants patience. think that's something he wanted to express going forward in the middle east. >> and also i want to bring a quote to your attention. helene cooper and robert worth have a piece in "the new york times" that examines the president's tough test with the arab spring. they write bold words and support for democratic aspirations are not enough to engender good will in this region, especially not when hampered by america's own national security interests. how much of what's actually said at the u.n., amie, you know, changes foreign policy? >> i don't think it's going do so much. this election is about the economy. even though there was an emphasis on foreign policy, sooner or later you're going to see a shift when obama is back
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in ohio, a key swing state. i think the attention is going to swing back to the economy. that's what most democratic strategists are saying. it's not over foreign policy. >> okay. well the hill's amie parnes. thanks so much for checking that out for us. back to the table, toure, you listened to the speech today as much as i did, a lot of tough talk on iran. >> of course. any politician, especially president obama wants a nuclear iran. >> i can think of one person. >> a lot of serious and thoughtful people are advancing the idea that a nuclear iran is not necessarily the worst thing in the world. it is not a doomsday scenario largely because those people in iran, leading iran, are rational thinkers. the leader -- former leader was on "60 minutes" two weeks ago and he called ahmadinejad
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rational thinkers. now, if anybody would want to think on it and say, they're not, they're kooks, it would be mossad. if you think about india and north korea which is led by a koouk. we think about iran having the bomb is not necessarily the worst thing. the likelihood of using it against israel, a large part of that is about domestic policies and looking good within iran. they know as soon as they press that button, israel is a nuclear power, america is a nuclear power. pressing the button, iran is wiped off the map. >> they're too rational for that. right. i think we heard a lot of tough talk today on extremism and as
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amie said, free speech. i think it's all fine and good but it's also a lot of blowing in the wind. i think what we need is to call for moderate islam to draw a clearer line, a red line against sort of the radical extremism we're seeing in some of these arab nations and then i think we need conservative islam to say we are not going to tolerate killing in the name of our religion. you're because tardizing our faith and you're making us all look bad. i think if you remember back to the crisis in the catholic church, no one accepted that this was just a few guys, a few bad priests abusing kids. we held the catholic church itself responsible. the pope -- we require thad the pope do something about this from the top down. i think we need to treat islam the same way. no one is suggesting that islam equals terrorism, just as no one is saying that the catholic church equals child abuse, but we need to hold people at the top responsible for the
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messages, for the actions, the things that are being done in the name of that religion. >> i think you're right. and i think part of that conversation is also domestically celebrating moderate islam, reminding american people that the two are not equated. there has been a massive rise in anti-islam sentiment in the united states that is very disturbing. thing the fact that we can say there's moderate islam and peaceful islam is something we have to work on. >> you're totally right. they have to police themselves, islam. america needs to stop looking at islam as the enemy. it's a small part. >> i think we do agree. i think we're all pretty much grown-ups right now. most of us are not talking about the whole of islam, but the whole of islam needs to respond to this problem because this problem is being performed and acted out in their name
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incorrect incorrectly. and so i think until more moderate muslims and conservative leaders come forward and say, enough, you cannot do this in our name anymore, what we say is going to be a lot of talking to ourselves and preaching to the choir. >> and as the president said today, no one has suffered from terrorism more than the people in the middle east in the arab world. >> yeah. the onus is on us all. all right, we've got a lot more to get to this hour including replacement rage. will a weekend of controversial calls culminating last night finally bring an end to the nfl lockout. spin cycle next. as president of our kintry and commander in chief of the military i accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and i will always defend their right to do so. le announcer ] born from the naturally sweet monk fruit, something this delicious could only come from nature.
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for years contraception has been handed out but it's been made available to those as young as 14 and they can get it without their parents knowing. the program is called c.a.t.c.h. it's reignited the role in private sectors especially with teenagers so young but the city says it's got to do something to stem the rising tied of teen pregnancy which often leaves poor girls to drop out of school.
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nearly 7,000 girls annually drop out before the age of 17. 90% were unintended. more thereafter half lead to abortion. what happened here is kind of ahead of the kuvg at least nationally in terms of where we are in public schools and these matters, but it occurs to me thinking about this that maybe this is something we're going to be seeing outside of new york city i would guess fairly soon because i'm thinking back really less than 20 years ago when i was growing up and there was a bee dee bait going on. there was a debate about the ail veilability of condoms in the public high school. it was extremely controversial. i remember religious leaders in towns to rally zents against it and i believe the town school committee voted it down. i see the most recent polling data on it now is from 2009. nearly 70% of people nationally say, yes, condoms should be available in public schools. so i just see, you know, in less than two a decades where public opinion has moved on that.
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and i look at something like this and i say, yeah, it's going to get a lot of heat right now, but i bet you, you know, a decade from now this is the next phase of that. >> yeah. one thing i would point out here is the change here is making it available in the schools. new york state already has access to contraception without parental parental permission. this is making it more accessful. if you want to combat poverty, teen age pregnancy, this is the most effective way to do it. and i'll tell you two things. over the '90s there was a decline in teenage pregnancy in the united states and a good institute did it. a quarter of the decline was caused by an increase in abstinence, teenagers were having less sex but three quarters of the decline was caused by a decrease in the use of contraceptions and using more effective contraceptive, so instead of condoms they were
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using the longer term birth control and that made a big difference. the other thing here is internationally even though we stheerch decline, the united states is still doing worse than most other countries in the developed world in terms of teenage pregnancies. as you can see on the chart, that is also because, number one, we're using less effective forms of birth control. that's like the primary reason. so providing access to birth control, providing the morning after pill, making it readily accessful, those are the best way to combat teen pregnancy and reduce poverty. >> do we make it available to teens who inevitably have sex and all mountainly do it without ruining their life and beinging families long before they're ready and forming families they're not ready to live or do we rivering ruining their lives? for me the answer is really clear. i want them to have the ability
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to experiment and protect themselves as they're experimenting rather than just say we're going to not allow you to have contraception and we hope that you don't have sex. >> i guess i'm just a prud. i really just wish we could spend more time talking about,000 reduce unwanted pregnancies before the fact and not after the fact, not the what to do both. >> i think you can do both. >> we all twhanlt. >> we've put so much responsibility on teachers to address these issues of sex education and drugs and alcohol and tolerance and self-esteem that it gives the parent as chance to opt out and say it will be covered in school. i think parents should be having those discussions at home. >> shifting gears from that to public outcry. >> nfl officials made a call that was heard around the world. the touchdown counts and the
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seahawks get the win. do you need a refresher? let's go to the videotape. >> the packers play it at the goal line as wilson struggles to keep it aleve. the file play. wilson at the end zone which is fought for by tate with jennings simultaneous who has it. who do they give it to? touchdown! . one guy goes on touchdown, the other said no time. >> obviously from the replay you can see that m.d. jennings catches the ball and golden tate the wide receiver tries to wrestling it away from him. capped off an embarrassing week for the nfl as important calls were seemingably blown left and right and we nearly had an injury. ogletree slipped on a hat that was inexplicably thrown on the
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field. rahm any team even adopted it as a campaign platform. >> i think the refs are working part time for the president in the oval office. unlike the seattle seahawkses last night we want to deserve this victory. >> some clever -- >> there were some protests. >> there were protests outside of lambeau. as a packer fan i would be right there with them. governor scott walker tweeted after catching a few hours of sleep, the packers game is still just as painful. #returnthere #returntherealrefs. >> let's deal with the union referees we want them back. he might have taken that down after he confirm thad. but i wanted to make one point on this. there's outrage and this is completely justified and i totally agree let's get the
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regular referees back, but i tlink is a tendency to look back at the, you know, regular ref era of the nfl as a bigone aera where they got everything right. >> nobody thinks that. nobody thinks that. >> you want to know how bad it was before? in 1998 seattle seahawks and they're playing. the referee puts two hands up in the air, jets win the game. seahawks missed playoff by a game. cost him the job. it's the reason we got replays back we had the famous coin toss incident. the coach blew the heads/tails call. there's bill cowher. they get whistled for too many membership on the field. they had 11 players in the field.
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he stuffs it in the pocket of the referee. listen. i understand -- >> steve, steesve, you're blami the refs too much. >> i have a point. i have a point here. my point is, absolutely we should bring the refs back but let's not forget it's a regular feature of the nfl week in and week out that we complain about that. these refs are making regular refs look really, really good and profwegsal and i definitely want them back. everybody wants them back. show his tweet that he just sent out. let's get the nfl fans on both sides of the aisle. hope the lockout settles soon. b.o. look. the think we're not talking about here -- >> is that the packers should have won. >> no. that offense, which is awesome, put up 12 points and when they put up 12 points over 60 minutes and they allow anything to happen --
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>> blame the victim, to toure. blame the victim. >> he didn't win his home state. he deserved it. >> we can't say it comes back to one play. >> on the road, on the road. >> if they put the game away, then there would be no problem. so the packer -- the packer defense -- offense -- >> on the road in hostile -- >> the 49ers beat them from the first game. it's not looking good for them. >> it's getting ugly. >> like mackal jackson, look at the man in the mirror. >> can i say this is the only show we can take football and turn it back to al gore. >> the president delivering a major message for common humanity. but in our guest spot, a woman who's taken on a very sensitive issue and says there's a lot more work to be done. we're sitting on a bunch of shale gas.
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today, speaking of the clinton global initiative, the president made his strongest statement to date on human trafficking. let's take a listen. >> right now there's a girl somewhere trapped in a brothel crying herself to sleep again and maybe daring to imagine that some day just maybe she might be treated not like a piece of property but as a human being. so our message today to them is to the millions around the world, we see you. our fight against human trafficking is one of the great human rights causes of our time and the united states will continue to lead it in partnership with you. >> one of the anti-trafficking people in the audience is
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tracking sex trafficking specifically for underaged girls. andrea said that sex trafficking was on the rise. this is tracked on backpage.com. she was part of a coalition pressuring them to shut down the website. this week there's news on that front as well. in the guest spot today here to bring us up to speed on these developments, we welcome back to the show andrea powell. welcome back. >> thank you for having me back. >> tell us what's going on. >> kris tall, this is a relatively new development. you're right. they parted way bus what we believe this is primarily a publicity stunt to distract the coalition efforts while
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backpage.com and owners grow and increase the marketplace where they're enabled the buying and selling of girls that and you were actually in the audience when the president was speaking about trafficking. he invited you to be there. some of the things he talked about is the new zero tolerance policy, zero tolerance policy in government contracting, proper training for police, judges, and educators, and money to help victims of trafficking. >> he called it out as the huge human rights violation as it is. but to readvise the human rights protection act is huge and i hope he heeds that message. but there's certainly more to be done but his team has worked tirelessly on the effort including meeting with fair girls. this is incredible but there's a lot more work to be done. >> andrea, his message was
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powerful. anyone listening to it would agree. the examples cited are appalling. i guess when you look at the attention we've hat on issues about women's issues and right this year in this campaign, why doesn't this one feature into that conversation as well? i really haven't heard much about it from obama today and from romney really. i can't think of it as all. >> i think this is marking a shift. i think we're going to be hearing a lot more from not only the president but key areas of the administration, and looking at this issue is one of the core human rights issues that this country is facing. i think one of the misconceptions we've had to date is it happens over there in other countries around the world. but the fact is the majority of the girls we serve and those are american citizens right here born and raised and this message from the president called that out and is calling for a collaborative effort from coalition efforts as well as administration. >> andrea, can you tell me about
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some of the ways girls are being pulled into slave lakery? >> absolutely. there's this misconception that girls are kidnapped off the streets or girls make bad choices but the key thing to keep in mind when you're thinking about trafficking, it's vulnerability. some of the most vulnerable are girls who are runaways, girls in the foster care system, living in extreme povg earth because of economic circumstances or abuse in the home. traf ekers know how to look for these victims and that's why we have to continue to double up on our efforts and use the opportunity of the president speaking out today to go forward and make that clear message that no one, including a teenage girl, has the right to be sold like a commodity. >> andrea, what inspired you to become an aid in it? >> when i was in college i actually witness a friend of mine being sold into sex
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trafficking by her parents and that stood with me over the years. anand when i was 23 i started my own non-profit not knowing what i was getting into but i'm honored every day to work alongside survival advocates in our office. >> thank you so much, andrea, for your words and your courage. deepak chopra lands right here at this table. [ ross ] we are in the dades gorge,
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>> dr. chopra. >> and then there's the truth or my version of it, of whom my dad really is. >> that's a clip from "decoding deepak," a documentary about spiritual deepak. it's an attempt to show viewers deepak the dad. if he wasn't busy enough, deepak's out today with a new book called, "god:a story of revelation." with us now is deepak chopra. welcome. >> thanks for having me. >> tell us about the book. what were you setting out to do here? >> the way i started the book is i came across a new york times article from the 1930s, and it was a meeting between the indian philosopher and einstein. this is just when hitler was starting his psychosis for the collective mind. they met outside berlin in 1930,
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and they talked about why we're here, why is there a universe, is there a consciousness behind the universe, is there a god, is there a soul, is there a death? i noticed nobody had picked up on this article from 1930. but it's there. i googled it. i backtracked from einstein to job in the old testament and saw how our interfrom iation of god has evolved from job to st. paul to socrates to shankara. so actually this is a brief history of god and to rumi. >> it's interesting to me. for them a project in common is they try to look at the various versions of god or prophets and creation stories and what they have in common and it seems as though you're trying to say in
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this book that those stories and our ideas of god have changed markedly over the years. >> well, listen. we now know that 70% of the university is dark universe, 730% is dark matter. that the university began 40 million years ago in something called the big bang. so some of those ideas are really mythologies. they don't jive with what we know about creation at the moment, and yet there are certain things that are in common, right from the beginning. there's a sense that's beyond the visible world, something that's beyond space and cau causali causality, something that's visible. there are the platonic values of goodness, truth, beauty, harmony, love, compassion, joy, equanimity which are essential in every religion and then there's the fear of the loss of
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death because there's the concept of the eternal existence of the soul. those things didn't gogo away. they didn't go away even with our modern understanding of cause mollg cause mollgy. so i what i've done is track thad and said while religion in its strict interpretation might not be literally as true as we'd like to believe it, yet the religious experience remains, whether it was jesus or st. paul or shankara or any of the great teachers of humanity. >> deepak, the story is called "god." >> democrat the story of revelation." >> who is god. >> the story of evolution. and we would say he's the creator of space, time, energy, matter, cosmos, the author of everybod evolution ultimate truth, love, compassion, joy, and peace augment.
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that's what god is. if you want to be tech anything cal about it, god is the cosmic mind in which there's a naoto technology workshop that creates the universe literally. the moment we look at the university from the window of modern science, the more it looks mind like than machine-like. the universe is not a physical machine. it works like your body works. your body has a hundred trillion cells which is more than the cells in the milkiway galaxy. er cell is tracking what every other cell is doing. how does a human body thing thoughts, play piano, make a baby all at the same time because your biological rhythms are a symphony of the universe and you dance to the music even though you can't name the tune. this is so mind-boggling that there's no physical ef
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explanation for it. there's a mind and it's only nipny tanlt, on nish ant, on knee press ant and you can't change. >> one of the things that fascinates me in my generation there's been a decline in practiced organization, going to church. but still there's been more of a do it yourself phase. >> right. the questions don't go away. >> can you gel get the fulfillment without being part of an organized religion? >> i think that's the future of religion. it's going to be secular, universal, hold onto the truths of organized religion. organized rehiggs has always done a lot of good. we always looks at the bad things like the war but look at the humanitarian work of mother teresa and the dalai lama. he'll say he's not organized but
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he represents buddhism. thing the future, especially in the global environmental we live in with social networks and media and people can watch us now anywhere on the planet, they'll gradually go in the area of secular religion alt. they'll hold onto and say how do i have it myself. if you look at the moon and point at it, you worship the moon, not the finger. there's a direction to a all of this. it's happening by itself actually which is wonderful. >> the book is "god:the story of revelations." sometime we can switch glasses, yes? >> i can get you better glasses than this. up next, proof we can still solve problems big and small. you've just got to have faith.
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today, our commitment to the gulf, and to america, has never been stronger. i was talking to my best friend. i told her i wasn't feeling like myself... i had pain in my pelvic area... and bleeding that wasn't normal for me. she said i had to go to the doctor. turned out i had uterine cancer, a type of gynecologic cancer. i received treatment and we're confident i'll be fine. please listen to your body. if something doesn't feel right for two weeks or longer, see your doctor. get the inside knowledge about gynecologic cancers. this. you've just got to have faith. oh, hey alex. just picking up some, brochures, posters copies of my acceptance speech. great! it's always good to have a backup plan, in case i get hit by a meteor. wow, your hair looks great. didn't realize they did photoshop here. hey, good call on those mugs. can't let 'em see what you're drinking. you know, i'm glad we're both running a nice, clean race. no need to get nasty. here's your "honk if you had an affair with taylor" yard sign.
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real. our next guest says more incremental progress is ahead of us. it's an honor to welcome a writer i admire, steven johnson, author of eight books. his newest is also brilliant, "future perfect: the case for progress in a network age." welcome, steven. >> thank you for having me. the easiest way to think about it is to think of the history of the internet and e-mail and wikiped wikipedia. these are all things we rely on in all facets of society from the government to the private sector and yet they were all built by these peer networks, these decentralized groups of people collaborating in an open way without any kind of ownership over their idea, without any patents, just an open network collaboration that's created all of these things we now depend on.
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you know, if we were having this conversation 40 years ago and i said there's going to be the open nonpropry tairt collaboration that's going to build things, you would have said go back to your commune in california, right? but, in fact, now we can point to these things and say they do work, they've changed the planet in all these important ways, what else can they do. >> one of the things that marks your work is optimism. you talk northbound this work, when you're a doom seayer, naysayer, they look at you. it's contained in the title, this optimism. how do you as a writer and a thinker and as a person who's reserr researching the world be on mystmis mystic when everyone says, oh, everything is bad. >> there's two things. the first is as you said progress often takes a form of slow and steady, right?
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so aviation safety, for instance. you're now more likely to get elected president of the united states in your lifetime than you are to die in a plane crash. but that didn't come through, you know, miraculous breakthrou breakthrough. it was just every year people were tweaking thesector, sometimes public sector. and it doesn't make news with each small improvement but when you stack it up over 20 or 30 years, you see a real break through. the other problem is it's also lots of people, it's not one individual genius. it's a network of people working on the problem and you can't just point to a steve jobs and say, here is our hero who saved the day. >> talk to me about how this would apply to politics. it sounds sort of like direct democracy. >> it really -- it echoes some of detective democracy, but i think the best example of where it's already starting to work is on the local level, on the
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neighborhood level. people going and saying, you know, i've got this problem in my community, i'd like to propose solutions. sometimes using technology, sometimes just getting together. and building tools that enable people to kind of fix the problems that they see right around them. 311 in new york does this in a beautiful way. people can dial three numbers on a phone and report potholes and report a bar down the street that's making too much noise or ask for services from the city, and the city gets smarter and smarter at being able to solve all these problems in this incredible complex system of 8 million people crowded together in this small amount of space. >> but you're also arguing that there's sort of a model here to break gridlock in washington, the partisan polarization in congress? >> if you believe that the peer network is a great driver of positive social change in society, where do you fit on the political spectrum? you're not a big -- necessarily a big fan of big government, and you're not just kind of a free market libertarian who believes the marketplace can solve
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everything, and so there isn't quite a slot for those of us who are peer progressives or believers in peer networks yet. we don't quite have a party. i don't know if this means we need a peer party to go alongside the tea party, but i think there is a movement of people who are trying to solve problems this way, and we've got such great inspirational success in the story of the internet to point to that i think it's a great time to be involved with this. >> i hear you use the word network though and i just wonder, the sort of theory in political science is that, you know, basically when you push people, you ask them are you a democrat or republican, you find out most people, there aren't that many independents, most people identify with one party or the other, and that each party is really a decentralized network. it's not really a top down organization, it's activists, interest groups, fund-raisers, elected officials, governing professionals, strategists, all these different people in sort of a decentralized national network. it seems to me we already have sort of a network system in politics and it's almost the reason for the gridlock we have
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in washington because the parties are moving so far apart. >> one of the big principles of the book is the value of diversity. if you have lots of different points of view or perspectives coming to bear on a problem, the system will perform better over time. you will come up with more original solutions, and the problem we have in politics right now that's a big part of gridlock is we don't have enough diversity in terms of the voting blocs because of jerry manderring and in terms of campaign finance where you have a small percentage of the population that's funding the super pacs and these campaigns. so that has narrowed the number of voices involved in the key decisions, and it's poll larized the political candidate. sgroo steven, real quick, did you also solve the great maple syrup caper in this book? >> it's a great story. no new york city many years ago there was a strange thing that would happen where whole neighborhoods would be saturated with the smell of maple syrup. >> i remember.
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it was uncanny. >> is xhesmells like breakfast the west vaillage. because people were thrcalling to 311 they had all this data and they looked at the weather patterns and figured out it was coming from this spot in new jersey where they turned out to make -- it was a nice smell though, it wasn't a bad smell. >> it was lovely. >> they were making fake maple syrup there every couple months. >> i did not know that there was an aunt jemima wing of al qaeda. you learn something new every day. >> my pleasure. hell hath not fury like an s.e. cupp stuck in traffic. my doctor told me calcium
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in the 1930s an aspiring comedian took his wife to the theater. he asked the usher to escort her to her seat, there was a brief misunderstanding, and a famous joke was created. youngman went on to make a career on the one-liner, take my wife, please. comedians like rodney dangerfield carried the line into the second half of the century. i sat in a cab for 40 minutes to go a mile and a half to work. police cars lining stretches of sidewalk to secure a wide perimeter for the big wigs blocks away and the henne youngman line took on a particular resonance, take the u.n., please.
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full disclosure, it doesn't take much to get me ticked at the u.n. my disdain for the international peace promoting world governing body knows few bounds. for one its rank imperialism. just look at the guys who conceived of it, guying like immanuel kant who wrote humanity exists in its greatest perfection in the white race. the first official u.s. propaganda department. these sound like the guys i want policing the world. the u.n. has embarrassingly inept. it's never prevented a war. nuclear powers have only increased. sanctions go ignored, and leadership is an international laughingstock. then there are our interests, the u.n.'s anti-american bias is